Time. She felt it slipping away, and it would take too long to hunt down the shooters right now, too inefficient. Kill more sooner, that was the right move. Kill more now.

Seconds and seconds and she couldn’t run because there was a bullet in her leg and that leg did not want to run; it wanted to fold up under her.

Never mind, she would heal herself when they were all dead, and then, yes, there would be time, but her body, the body she had stolen, filthy weak sack of blood that kept leaking out, it was weakening, wasn’t it? She could feel it. The blood leaking out of her. Had to stop and heal that, at least, had to stanch the bleeding.

She bent over and pressed her hand against the wound, hobbling down the street as she did, an awkward, laughable-looking creature.

And Nemesis was doing something, moving, preparing, wasn’t he? She could feel him. He was a shadow of himself, weak, a ghost. Just die!

Just finally die, you stupid little boy!

The blood still leaked between her fingers. Why wasn’t the healing working?

She reached the highway and there were people, kids, running in panic toward the brilliant lights of the barrier.

A burned-out gas station.

An overturned FedEx truck.

Panicked children.

“Die!” she roared, and fired after them. “Die!”

Her body woozy. And the healing . . . too slow. Why wasn’t . . .

And then Gaia knew. She felt the mind pushing against hers, fighting her. Not Nemesis.

No, the Healer. Wrestling her for control of the healing power. Blocking her. Wanting her to bleed to death! Trying to kill her!

Gaia struck at her, invisible tentacles through the indescribable space that connected them. She saw the Healer in her mind, saw her face, her actual human face as though she was there on the road standing between Gaia and her victims.

Lana. Something was burning in her mouth. Smoke was coming from her nose. And she was unafraid. She was ready for the pain the gaiaphage could cause her.

Well, then, I wouldn’t want to disappoint!

She saw Lana staggered by the lashings of pain, the burning thing falling from her mouth, hands pressed against the agony in her head, but fighting back, draining Gaia’s strength, delaying, delaying.

With every last ounce of her strength Gaia struck at the Healer. She felt the Healer’s pain, felt the Healer’s weakening, and Gaia crowed, tilted her head back, and howled at the red-glowing sky in triumph.

Someone was shooting at her from behind a truck.

She rolled the truck over, crushing the shooter.

This time when she bent down to touch the bleeding hole, it sealed. The blood would no longer flow, but she could do no more; the healing power was ebbing fast as Lana pushed back again, fought Gaia for control.

How does she fight me?

Still time. Still time. Nemesis had not done it yet. Nemesis had not found his home. Not . . . just . . . yet.

And there it was finally: the barrier. It would mean showing herself. Not at all how she had planned this. Her body, her face, they would be revealed. It would make things much harder later, when Nemesis died and she walked free. But she had been stymied, attacked, burned, shot, hurt again and again, nearly killed . . . No time for half measures. No time for clever plans. Time to ensure that Nemesis died and took this trap of a place down with him.

Like spooked cattle the humans gathered there. So many of them. So easy to slaughter.

They cowered. They cried for mercy. It would be easy.

Gaia felt the peace inside her. She felt the joy of the moment. She felt victory.

I don’t need to heal if I can kill.

She raised her hands. Spread them wide apart.

And fired two beams of killing light. One to the left. One to the right. Slowly she brought the beams toward the center.

The people screamed as the beams began to slice into those on the left and right flanks.

They climbed over one another to escape.

Seconds and it would be over.

Connie Temple stood in the press of frantic parents and hangers-on and thrill seekers who spread across acres of land beside the barrier.

She had been worrying for days about what would happen if the barrier came down. She’d occupied her mind with concern for the future, and with the gnawing guilt from fearing that she might have sent her closest friend’s daughter to her death.

Now she watched the TV monitors on the satellite trucks with mounting despair. They had showed satellite footage of the spreading conflagration. They’d shown the video of a little girl ripping a man’s arm off and eating it. They’d shown endless “interviews” with terrified, starving children. There had been long-distance drone video of something that looked like a monster made of stone and, in these last hours, what was undeniably a gun battle in Perdido Beach.

The whole world was watching. And the whole world was helpless. In the end it wasn’t going to matter at all what she said or did or felt. In the end it would all come down to the kids in that awful fishbowl.

She thanked God the barrier had been opaque for so long: had she been able to see, had the world been able to see, the parents would have been driven mad.

She stood now just ten feet from the barrier. Almost within reach were children crying, screaming soundlessly, begging.

And just beyond them a lovely teenaged girl, with arms raised, who now fired bright beams of light. The dazzling green beams struck the barrier and passed through the transparent force field.

The people outside never realized their own danger until the left-hand beam burned through a National Guard Humvee.

And then, yes, everyone then knew that death was coming not just for their children, but for them, too.